Mukul is himself an avid online shopper and the director of Business development at Hi-Tech International. As he has his client base spread globally, exchanging gifts or sending something particular to someone who lives in a different part of the world was a perpetual concern for him since it always proved to be an arduous affair. Even his favourite e-commerce websites couldn’t rescue him from this ordeal since their services were limited to India only.

Apart from this, he wasn’t oblivious to the fact that the booming online shopping industry was giving opportunity to manufacturers and retailers across India to capitalise the power of Internet and churn good money out of it but at the same time small scale retailers and suppliers were being isolated from this trend partly due to their illiteracy and mostly due to the lack of awareness.  

The startup is of the opinion that profit is never the ultimate aim of CartMyDeal. They are reaching to small scale manufacturers and suppliers across India, explaining them the merits of Internet, bringing them onboard, marketing their products and accomplishing mutual growth.

However, in the enigmatic field of startups, there are innumerous companies vying to garner the same position. “Every emerging e-commerce firm particularly those venturing into multiple products retail are either getting crushed by the competition or couldn’t handle the destructive challenges, be it related to logistics, technology infrastructure or COD, that this sector has to offer. If market observers are to be believed, no player is making a unit profit on anything and that explains the big face values of capital that this ecommerce players are raising from VCs and investors to help them keep going. Backed by the investors they are in a race to formulate more luring schemes than their counterpart to lure customers. It appears that everybody is relying on investors rather than their consumers for profit. This is the biggest hurdle that we are facing, the ongoing trend, which leaves you with two choices either look for investors or get acquired by some giant within few years of inception.” added Ajit of CartMyDeal.

According to Ajit, CartMyDeal is showing a healthy progress everyday and he believes in a couple of months they will be able to silence their critics who were sceptical about the startup right from the very beginning.

“It is often said that future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. The type of life we are living today was once considered “impossible” but the dreams of some who chose to go beyond the ordinary debunked the claims of those who chose to be “realistic”. Many opportunities are lost daily because people are out looking for four-leaf clovers. Don’t try to chase luck. Chase your hunger for experience, risks and you will never end up disappointed.” is the team’s advice to budding entrepreneurs out there who are trying to emerge victorious in a battlefield replete of juggernauts. 

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The staple dialogue no matter where he went was that “I want to do something of my own and get rid of my job” and “I Quit, Jo Ukhadna hain Ukhadlo!”Everyone was saying the same thing, be it his father’s friends or any working professional.

Hence he made up his mind and started working on the crowdfuncing portal during late November 2013 and launched it on the 11th of April.

“What did I just hear?” was the instant reaction of people who heard the name of the portal for the first time. However, when he and his team pitched his product to people, they were able to excite a majority of the crowd instantly. People were quite excited as they were looking for such a portal which could cater to all a startups needs on one single consolidated platform, be it funding, partners or ideas.

According to Akshay, Ukhadlo.com has garnered a favourable response and the platform has already been covered by juggernauts like The Hindustan Times and The Economic Times.

“Our portal works exactly like Facebook unlike others which are dispersed, fragmented and tend to remain limited to one use-case requiring the individual to switch platforms. We have an Activity Feed just like Facebook which alerts you of any activity based upon your location, industry and interests. Users can directly interact via messaging. People can search for Partners of their choice in their location and industry easily. They can also get their ideas validated and can partner up on them on the Idea Hub. The portal also enables them to discover various Startups and even register their own startup to be discovered by others.” added Akshay.

Currently, registrations are free on the website and the team intends to keep it that way for some time. The team is looking foward to monetize their ad system and also move to a freemium model soon.

Akshay is of the opinion that the current startup scenario is “Phenomenally Bright”. He also believes that the startup ecosystem will certainly continue to grow and get a further boost from the new business friendly Government of the country.

“Don’t wait for a plan to materialize. Don’t expect perfection in your very first try. Just jump In. No idea is too big or small, it’s just the mindset which matters. Life is short, startup now!” is Akshay’s advice to other innumerous budding entrepreneurs out there!

Think this exciting portal can help you in any way? Leave your comments below!

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WishBooklet is an easy way to share the gifts you want to receive from your friends and family and get them to pitch in money towards the gifts. Think of it as kick starter for gifts. On WishBooklet you can easily add items from any online store to your wish list, share this list online, and crowd fund gifts with your friends and family. On WishBooklet you get what you really want and nobody has to pay a ton of money to get it for you.  Facing the same problems of gifting, Eric Santos and Erik Montes hatched the idea of WishBooklet.

Here’s an excerpt from our rendezvous with Eric.

Tell us a bit about your background and the path that ultimately led you towards WishBooklet

I come from an entrepreneurial background. I studied entrepreneurship in college and started my first tech company in my senior year during the program. WishBooklet is actually my third startup. My friend Erik originally came up with the concept for WishBooklet during a hackathon. He pretty much built the whole app during this hackathon but put it on the backburner afterwards. I eventually teamed up with him to bring WishBooklet to the masses.

What are the key milestones for the next 6 – 12 months?

Raise a seed round, finish mobile and grow ridiculously fast!

What is the biggest hurdle you have faced or are still facing?

Educating our users about how crowd funding works. We’ve been creating and putting out a lot more crowd funding content to help with this.

Has your platform got the feedback and growth you expected since launch?

Feedback and growth has been great. We’ve been received well in the media and have been featured on Mashable, Examiner, ABC30, Tech Cocktail and other publications. Of course we’d love to be growing faster, but we are happy with our current pace.

Do you have any new features in the pipeline?

It’s not a feature, but we’re working on a really cool API that we will be offering to e-commerce sites. Can’t get into the details too much yet, but it’s going to be really cool.

If not for WishBooklet, where would you be now?

I’m an entrepreneur by heart, so I would probably be working on some other venture.

What is one startup that has recently caught your interest?

I’ve recently become a big fan of Uber. They’re making big waves for sure.

Who inspires you the most?

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Drake “Drizzy” Rodgers.

What one piece of advice would you give to soon to be startup founders?

Dream big, start small.  We all have big romantic ideas that will change the world but always start with servicing a targetable market.

Thanks Eric!

WishBooklet is an easy way to share gifts from any online store with your friends and family and let them to pitch in to get them for you. Finally, here’s your chance to hint your friends on those shoes you have wanted to get for ages! Do check out Wishbooklet and let us know if your wishes did come true!

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As time goes by there are times when we neglect our friendship for the finer things in life. The once close bond suddenly drifts apart. Friendsmoo is one such website where you can connect with new and old friends at the same time. Keep yourself reconnected with old buddies whereas catch up with like minded people. Friendsmoo was started in 2008 by Nagendra Kumar, who was always enthusiastic about having his own business and came up with the idea of a social networking website for friends.

Nagendra Kumar

Friendsmoo offers the amazing features of sharing videos, photos, documents, etc. along with participating in various forum and blog discussions. Not only does it help expand your knowledge, but also lets you connect with people sharing the same thoughts and views as you. Besides that, Friendsmoo has a number of online games to keep your boring lazy Sunday busy. Apart from the games and other interesting features, Friendsmoo also offers various gifts and coupons.

Friendsmoo has crossed many milestones up to now and in the next 6 – 12 months they are planning to expand this website and want to add more features for public. They are already in this process of raising investment from outside. Currently Friendsmoo is the Brand partner for six Tollywood movies and very soon plans to launch its own production house and an ecommerce and coupon website.

“If you have business plans, do the paperwork and then decide how you want your idea to start. Try and try, do not lose your confidence levels.” is Nagendra’s advice to young entrepreneurs.

In this fast paced world friends keep us sane through the ups and downs of life. It is vital we make the effort to keep our friendship strong. Many other platforms like Vebbler, Likewyss, The Decent Planet have also forayed into the world of social networking. Do you think they’ll be able to revolutionize modern day communication? Comment below and let us know! 

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“So to fulfil this big demand and supply gap, we have brainstormed lots of utilities, but problem was that, after getting exhausted at the office no one wants to work again. And I was sure that just utilities won’t work. People want to entertain, relax, enjoy. They need something which can release their tensions, rejuvenate them. Something which can add value to their after work-life and make their life interesting and happening again. So we were looking for an idea which they can enjoy, get entertained, laugh on it and share their happy moments with their friends. So this is where the Concept of ITChintu struck to us and now the concept has gone viral.” says Deependra Bundela founder at ITChintu

ITChintu.com is a one stop portal dedicated to improving the lives of working professionals. Developed as a necessity, it provides a wide range of solutions to the problems faced by working professionals with just a little pinch of humour. For the professionals who have recently joined the professional world, it provides the utilities to find new accommodation, rent a house, buy a bike, sell his old phone, get a carpool, find a new job or even search for their soul mate!

Here’s what a round of Q & A with Deependra told us about ITChintu!

Has IT Chintu got the feedback and growth you expected since launch?

We have received lots of appreciation from the IT Circle for our startup. We have been successful in making people laugh and smile after a long day of tiring work. People easily connect with our spoofs. Some say they are ‘really innovative’ some find it ‘hilarious’. And in terms of growth, we are doing fairly well. Our website is accessed by thousands of IT Professionals and within few months of existence, we’ve got more than 13000 registered users, 9000 posted ads and few thousands highly engaged Facebook fans which show the likability of our site.

Do you have any new features in the pipeline?

Yes, we have many more features in the pipeline but as of now we already have so many features to consolidate. Marketplace, Fashion store, IT Matrimonial, Weekender, Jobs portal, etc . So we have strategically divided ourselves into two teams, one is focusing on managing and improving the existing features and other is focusing on launching new features. In short, we have aligned ourselves towards our vision to provide greater utilities with better features to improve the after work-life of working professionals.

How involved are you with fundraising? What is the biggest hurdle you have faced or are still facing?

Till now, the journey has been pretty smooth. We are a self funded and a motivated startup. Motivated to put our everything to make it happen. But seeing the great response and feedback we have started looking for investors to strategically expand the startup.

What one piece of advice would you give to soon to be startup founders?

Mostly in the Indian scenario, it’s not that we don’t have creative and innovative ideas, but we keep pondering over it, analysing the pros and cons, future scenarios and fearing that we’ll fail. Yes it’s true that we have financial worries and limitation and are logically forced to follow whatever jobs we land up in but if you have an idea and are sure about it then don’t restrain yourself, don’t over-analyze and I would rather advise everyone to- “Stop thinking, Just Do it.“

Thank You Deependra!

Besides people finding it really entertaining, they have also appreciated the different portals started by them like carpool, accommodation, jobs which have helped many people, especially freshers who are new to the IT world, to solve their commutation and accommodation problems. Even the matrimonial and jobs portal is quite famous among experienced professionals for finding their soul mate and job through the reference network. Not only this but also their social platform “Weekender” is providing a way for professionals to make new connections.

Do you think ITChintu will prove to be the breath of fresh air that professionals look for at the end of each day? Do check out their website!

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Zoutons.com is a premier Coupons and Deal Aggregation Platform. They feature the most exciting coupons and deals from top Indian ecommerce stores like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Jabong, Myntra. Apart from this, they are the only Couponing Portal to Feature Exclusive Bank Coupons. So if you are searching for HDFC Bank Coupons or the Citibank card offers, they have the most updated list of card offers.

Founders of Zoutons.com

Zoutons also offers brand wise coupons which further reduces the effort of users in finding appropriately matched coupons to their shopping needs.The portal is ergonomically designed for startup stores, providing them a genuine platform to enhance their consumer reach through coupons.

“I graduated in 2010 from BITS Pilani and founded 3.14 Digital which is a leading Affiliate Marketing Company based In Delhi. As a Marketing company we had clients from the eCommerce domain like Foodpanda, Printvenue etc. Nishit who is the other founder of Zoutons joined us in February and pitched the idea of Zoutons. That’s when we decided to incubate Zoutons and leverage on the relationships we had built with ecommerce stores at the same time provide a better value proposition to the users. We were looking for a name which sounded like coupons and tried related permutations. The closest we got was Zoutons and thought it had enough chutzpah to become a brand tomorrow.” Says Sahil Chalana, Co-Founder of Zoutons.com

Zoutons.com is the only player to focus on Bank loyalty discounts. They have around 30 banks listed on the website which includes discount offers on cards like American Express, HDFC etc. When the user goes to an ecommerce site, he might easily miss the fact that his bank is offering him a discount.  On Zoutons, you can look for bank wise coupons and not miss any. The website is strategically designed to promote users to try a new brand and go to a new store, providing a genuine chance for startups in consumer acquisition. They also do some real time coupon syndication. Lots of couponing websites do this manually; they are trying to automate this. Also, since 30% of traffic is already mobile, there is a greater focus on getting mobile users on board.

[Also check: Buyt.in and PriceBaba]

In five years time, the Zoutons team would want to acquire the pole position in couponing as far as the Indian market is concerned. Their next target is also to get into offline couponing space as Sahil believes retail loyalty as a market would really mature in the next five years.

“When I graduated from BITS in 2010, I never took up a job and got an opportunity to directly be an entrepreneur.  For one year, we never made any money and it took us 9 months to crack our first client. Those months made me learn the importance of perseverance. As an entrepreneur, it’s really amazing to be smart and work hard but it’s your will to hang in there which would determine success in the long run. You should be ready to give at least 2-3 years full time without expecting a lot” adds Sahil.

Zoutons is a deal hunter’s paradise. When you are looking to buy your favourite Gadget, a shirt or Flowers for your girlfriend from your favourite eCommerce Store, visit Zoutons.com before to look and shop for the most attractive deals, discounts and coupons and save more.

Also visit Cashkaro.com, Pointshelf and Getextrabux for a rich shopping experience!

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